WeDon'tNeedNoStinkin'FeverSwampsVille
Yesterday, in a blog post of his own, the Dean of Victoria's Parliamentary Press Gallery, Vaughn Palmer, urged caution with respect to applying the term 'corruption' to the process that resulted in the BC Rail 'Deal Or No (Spur Line) Deals'.
Now, mostly Mr. Palmer was aiming his advice at the NDP, particularly where it involves linkages between Mr. Patrick Kinsella and any and all Railway companies he may (or may not) have worked with, especially given that no legal impropriety has been demonstrated with any certainty:
"....the NDP's caution strikes me as sensible. Corruption charges have already been laid in this case. Any allegation of corruption against people who haven't been charged (who aren't even under investigation) could amount to an invitation to a lawsuit....."
Which is, on the face of it at least, is advice that is hard to argue with.
But then Mr. Palmer went on to say the following:
".....E-mailers probably won't be sued. Bloggers might get away with it as well. But an Opposition member is another matter....."
This, as you might imagine, got my back up a little.
Especially the part about "bloggers might get away with it as well....."
So I left the following comment of my own at Mr. Palmer's place:
.....I will not quibble with the fact that the Bloggodome has been filled with a lot of corruption talk around this issue in a general sense.
But.
With respect to the specific matter at hand, I would most humbly suggest that the overwhelming majority of the bloggers who pay attention to the BC Rail (still-pre)trial proceedings, myself included, were very cautious.
In fact, I would even go further and suggest that Mr. Mason's column, which came out a scant few hours before the issue was explicitly raised in a court hearing last Thursday, pushed the envelope farther than almost any blog post did....."
I then left links to demonstrate that the only two 'bloggers' that I know of who explicitly raised the possibility, based on a transcript from Hansard, that Mr. Patrick Kinsella may have, potentially, worked for both CN and BC Rail before the matter was either raised by a proMedia columnist, Mr. Gary Mason of the Globe and Mail, and by RailGate defence lawyer Mr. Kevin McCullough last Thursday, Mar 26, 2009.
The first link was to a post from Mr. Paul Willcocks writing on his own (distinctly amateur/not corporate) site two weeks before all this on Wednesday March 11, 2009:
An alert reader posted an interesting Hansard exchange from May 28, 2003, on my site. The exchange came during debate on the budget for the premier's office......
J. MacPhail: A longtime Liberal Party fundraiser is Patrick Kinsella. He is the lobbyist for CN. Has the Premier or any of his ministers met with Mr. Kinsella and representatives of CN?
Hon. G. Campbell: I don't have an answer for that. As the member opposite knows, if she wants to know about specific meeting times with either myself or the minister, she can do that through freedom of information.
OK.
Did you catch that?
Ms. McPhail, then a member of the (not-quite official) opposition, stated that Mr. Kinsella was a 'lobbyist for CN', a point that was not questioned by the Premier Mr. Campbell in his non-responsive response.
Which brings us to the second blog post I alerted to Mr. Palmer and his readers to, this one written by myself on Friday Mar 13th, 2009 in which I followed Sean Holman and John Daly's proMedia leads in pointing out that Mr. Kinsella, by his own press release admission, was clearly working for BC Rail in 2003 and, based on Ms. McPhail's query described above, that he may have been involved in other activities that may not have involved BC Rail at about the same time:
But here's the thing .....
Didn't Joy McPhail have a question for Premier Campbell in the Legislature about Mr. Kinsella that did not mention BC Rail in, say, oh I dunno....May of 2003?
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You will find the official record of Ms. McPhail's question to Mr. Campbell in Hansard here (just type 'Kinsella' in the search box of your browser when you get there and it will take you right to the approprite passage).
Now.
Based on all that I, hope that you can agree that at least some 'bloggers' were exercising quite an abundance of caution prior to the dropping of the bombshell by Mr. Mason in his column of Thursday March 26, 2009 in which he wrote this:
"In an exchange long since forgotten, Ms. MacPhail asked Mr. Campbell if he had ever met Mr. Kinsella and Mr. McLean during the bid phase.
The Premier said at the time he didn't have an answer, and that if Ms. MacPhail wanted to know she could make a freedom-of-information request.
The trail went dry after that.
But now the matter is quite different. There is the appearance that Mr. Kinsella might have been on the payroll of BC Rail and CN Rail during the $1-billion sale of the rail line. And that there were meetings and phone calls going on between Mr. Kinsella and Mr. Campbell and/or members of his office......So.
Why am I raising this here?
Well, first of all, I really do think that sometimes 'bloggers' get collectively painted with the 'reckless' brush when it is not warranted (and I think this pertains especially to our good friend Mary, who always does her best to be fair and prudent in all matters RailGate related).
And second of all?
Well, today, Thursday April 2nd, 2009, Mr. Mason was at it again:
"It's been suggested the government rigged the bidding process for BC Rail in favour of the eventual winner, Canadian National, a company chaired by Liberal party fundraiser David McLean. Memos released in court and in the legislature indicate Mr. Kinsella may have been working simultaneously as a de facto lobbyist for CN and BC Rail, and that he had a direct pipeline throughout the bid process to his friend, Premier Gordon Campbell.
An extremely serious charge that speaks to the integrity of the Premier's office...."
Which is fair enough, as far as it goes, I suppose, based in large part, presumably, on some of the circumstantial correspondence/evidence read out in court last Thursday.
As for me?
Well, I'm still looking for more evidence*.
And/or answers to direct questions from folks like Premier Gordon Campbell, Mr. Kinsella and/or CN Rail (sans the Sub-Judice Priests, of course).
OK?
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*And anybody who wants to send me stuff can always do so at: pacificgazette at yahoo dot ca.
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